Animal crackers in my soup, monkeys and rabbits loop de loop, gosh oh gee but I have fun swallowing animals one by one – Air Nomads never consume meat
She loves animals. She adores them. Her rapport with the sky bison becomes her claim to fame. Jinora will be the spiritual leader of the Air Nation, and Meelo will be its powerhouse, but Ikki knows animals around the world like no one else. Furry or scaly or feathery, she loves them with all her heart.
When she finally comes of age, and fi-na-lly gets her arrows, she travels to Omashu to better understand the unique fauna that live in its treacherous mountain terrain: the wolfbats and the leopardgoats and, of course, the sacred badgermoles.
Her fellow Air Nation friends have friends in the city; with a few letters and contacts, she gets to share the rent and board with three students on Dumpling Street, a famous restaurant quarter.
Ikki likes her new roommates – Ginseng, Choi, and Pepper – at once. They admire her tattoos, and think she's a sophisticated city girl (which, well, she is). Then Ginseng – the one from the country – says, "You're a vegetarian? So you've, like, never eaten meat?"
"I've never eaten a single animal product," Ikki says, holding her head up proudly. "Not even milk."
Horrors!
"Not even eggs."
"How?" demands Choi.
"Not… even… honey," Ikki adds, and now they gasp and they say that she's lying.
It's a good thing, to room with three apprentice cooks. Ikki picks up a lot of cookery with a speed and interest that would have astounded her mother, but she keeps her standards. She pinches her nose expressively and tells them she'll forgive them the odor of pork grease, as long as they make sure to keep it out of her food. Laughing, they agree, and call her Miss Priss, friendly-like.
"No, no," she tells them mock-sternly. "Miss Priss is my sister."
The roommates would hear a lot about "Miss Priss" in the days to come. Ikki had no end of stories about times when Jinora had irritated her, usually by being more perfect than a human should be. It seemed to Ikki that every time she called Republic City from the Omashu community center telephone, Tenzin had another story about how wonderful Jinora had been, and how Ikki should do her best to be like her.
Choi was the youngest son of four, so he sympathized. Pepper, an only daughter, assured Ikki it couldn't be that bad. Ginseng nodded, said that Jinora sounded like a real tool, and cooked up a bowl of Ikki's favorite ramen: mushroom and bean sprout, topped with lashings of chili oil.
She spent a happy eight months with them before an awful fever struck Omashu.
All four of the roommates were stricken, but Ikki took it worst. The rest of her life she would shudder to think what a close call she had had with death itself.
Her fever broke, finally, but she would linger, weak and pale, long past her friends' recovery. She had wasted away, and despite the most nourishing soups her friends cooked up, she did not gain her old weight or strength. She had no appetite.
One day, she had dragged herself out to the little courtyard to attempt airbending. She couldn't even finish the first form, and Pepper found her out there, crying with frustration, huddled on a bench. Pepper urged Ikki to come inside and have some soup – mushroom and bean sprout – and Ikki exploded.
"I'll throw up if I have to eat another damned vegetable," she said, "it's not doing any good – it all tastes like sand – give me meat if you have to, but I can't stand feeling this weak!"
Ikki clapped a hand over her mouth, remorseful at once.
That evening, as the roommates gathered around the radio, Pepper emerged from the kitchen with a hot bowl of chicken broth. She set it in front of Ikki without a word.
Ginseng stared at Pepper, and Choi said she must have made a mistake, but Ikki picked up the bowl. She held it, hands trembling, for a minute while she audibly prayed to thank the chicken for its life. Then, she drank.
Ikki swallowed, then shuddered, then burst into tears. She thanked Pepper, then set to work finishing the soup with a will, scowling with every sip. But she drank it all, and slept soundly.
The next day she felt a bit better, and Ginseng made her a bowl of beef broth. Ikki gathered strength slowly. Choi alone held out. He refused to cook anything with meat for Ikki, saying she would regret it when she got better. Ikki turned away from him.
She grew stronger, and her appetite increased. After a spell of indigestion, her body quickly got used to eating solid meat – first duck and chicken, then pork in its different forms, and finally beef. When she was strong enough to resume airbending, she realized that she felt even better than she had before the fever. She felt stronger from top to toe – she even shot up an inch in height.
After a time, she grew strong enough to feel shame.
She lived in a secret horror that somehow – somehow – Jinora, or her parents, or someone, would find out she was eating meat. She only ate meat at home, with the blinds shut, lest someone see her (even though Ginseng told her she was being silly). She visited the slaughterhouses and meat-packing district of Omashu; she forced herself to look into the eyes of cows that were about to be slaughtered.
Pepper said she was being morbid. Choi said he'd just known she would regret this.
Ikki was strangely silent on the matter, though she was more than happy to gossip about anything else under the sun. She could visit her old friends again, and she could use airbending to draw all the noises of Omashu to her and wind them away from her.
But when she had recovered enough to take to the air – when she was strong enough to take to her glider – she leapt up and she flew. Being back in the air was utter bliss.
She'd never felt this airsick before. Was she out of practice? Or was it last night's heavy dinner? Or was it – maybe it was the stench of the air of Omashu, as the stockyards and the slaughterhouses and the butchers and the kitchens all did their work.
Ikki took a gale, and rose higher and higher out of the city, while her stomach pricked at her, unbearably painful, weighing her down and down.
After that day, Ikki never ate meat again.